Linda Ellerbee views Edwards’ reassignment as a dis to boomers. A writer to the Washington Post also cites the “specter of ageism.” More: former Rewind host Bill Radke in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and editorials in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the St. Petersburg Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Washington Post.

In an online poll, 84 percent of 1,300 Seattle Times readers favor keeping Bob Edwards at the Morning Edition microphone; though he is actually a young stud, one calls him “fatherly” and another compares him to Walter Cronkite. In USA Today, CBS News star Charles Osgood says of Edwards: “If it were me, I’d have him do it forever. Every time I hear him, I think how terrific he is.” SaveBobEdwards.com, established March 24, suggests sending protest e-mails to NPR exec Jay Kernis. More than 1,400 people protest Edwards’ reassignment at Petitiononline.com.

Newspapers are finding public TV producers at work all over: investigating an old bayonet in Carlisle, Pa., for History Detectives, shooting historical sites in Boston for American Experience, documenting reading problems in El Paso for Children of the Code: The Code and the Challenge of Learning to Read It.

Jefferson Public Radio may take on management of its second old movie palace in the northern-California / southern Oregon region: the Loew’s State in Eureka, Calif., according to the Eureka Reporter. JPR already runs the Cascade in Redding, Calif.

NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin calls for simpler leads to stories and for fewer cliches, which crop up most often in reports from member stations, he says. (Via Romenesko.)

More on bye-bye, Bob: The demoted host tells the Washington Post that NPR programming veep Jay Kernis had said he wanted someone else in the job and speculates Kernis was “tired” of listening to him. In USA Today, Ken Stern, NPR’s executive v.p., says the decision was about “needs for years to come.” The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.) grills Stern and concludes, “The demotion sounds like the kind of dumb move you might expect from commercial broadcasting, where change is often made because somebody in charge wants to make his mark.” MetaFilter readers decry the decision: “There are some things you just don’t mess with.”

Just as the Sandra Tsing Loh flap seemed to be winding up, KCRW has released a letter Loh wrote the station the day her show was canceled. “The discrepancy between the content and tone of this letter and the subsequent attacks on KCRW has yet to be explained,” says Ruth Seymour, KCRW’s g.m. Loh tells the L.A. Times that the statement “underscores, on a personal level, how frightening it is for individuals to take Ruth Seymour on for battle” (reg. req.). And Catherine Seipp recaps the fracas for the National Review Online.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is expected to become chair of the FCC-overseeing Commerce Committee, but the present chairman, John McCain (R-Ariz.), may keep the communications subcommittee, Roll Call reports. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) would have to take his chair elsewhere.

Some lovers of classical music dislike Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s recent decision to dump some classical in favor of news and jazz, reports the Clarion-Ledger. “Public radio is designed to provide us with something you can’t get on commercial stations,” says a listener.

Get Fuzzy speculates on what you might hear on National Cat Radio.

Sandra Tsing Loh will return to the Los Angeles airwaves–though with no profanity, even of the bleeped variety–on KPCC-FM, reports the Los Angeles Times (reg. req.).

Bob Edwards will leave Morning Edition April 30 to become a senior correspondent for NPR. He tells the Washington Post he would have preferred to stay with the show: “One day you change flavors at Baskin Robbins. I think that’s what this is.” Edwards discussed his job in a 1998 Current Q&A.

The National Endowment for the Arts is looking to commission a study of audience and programming trends in classical music on radio. (Word document.)

WETA President Sharon Rockefeller and doc film auteurs D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus will be honored April 22 by CINE, the filmmakers’ organization announced.

Hiring former Baltimore Sun editor Bill Marimow as a managing editor will help NPR do “the kind of reporting that sets the agenda, gets under the surface,” says network news veep Bruce Drake in the Sun. (Via Romenesko.) (NPR release on Marimow’s hiring.)